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The Golden Age was the result of a period of slowly-increasing player co-operation, a period of large inflation, and the removal of the Wilderness Swarm, which had been caused by a glitch in the player respawn and teleport system, causing "ghosts" to appear.

This period was known as the "Gilded Age of RuneScape," which itself had come after the "Early Age." During this period, players were not very co-operative, and the game was fraut with immature players and rulebreakers, not to mention thousands of bots and macroers.

Then the Clan Guild was established, where the commanding members of all major clans could arrive to discuss wars and alliances more formally. This was a milestone in player co-operation, since no-one had dared create such an institute with so many people. Indeed it was thought the Guild would quickly run out of interest and become another washed up backwater attempt at player co-operation, but in fact it thrived; players working there offered clan leaders food and drink, and every other month they held an Olympic-style competition, where each clan could enter their players who were best at a specific skill.

The Clan Guild had been established in December 2008, about half a year before the Wilderness Swarm appeared and took center stage for all players. After almost a year, from July 2009 to June 2010 every player was engaged in some way to help the war effort, be it mining, smithing, or actively training for combat. After JaGex became involved and the GPA was formed, the Swarm was finally eradicated.

The aftermath of the Wilderness Swarm's destruction to the autumn of 2011 was the "Mid-period" where it was hard to tell whether it was the Golden Age or just the run-up. In this period, players helped each other a lot more, and JaGex's popularity levels were on the rise. As such, many new aspects to the game such as quests, locations and weapons were released.